Holocaust remembrance on TikTok
A 15-year-old girl with hollow cheeks looks mournfully into the camera, her video accompanied by a song by RB singer Bruno Mars. A video caption explains that she is about to be deported to a concentration camp.
Next, a young man in a striped uniform appears to stage his supposed arrival in heaven. He says he was murdered in a gas chamber in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
These reenactments of Holocaust victim stories became one of the TikTok scandals of the summer in August 2020.
A hashtag challenge led Gen-Z users (aged 14 to 24) to pretend to be Holocaust victims who had perished in concentration camps. The Auschwitz memorial described the trend as “hurtful and offensive.”
One of the young TikTokers defended herself in an interview, saying that she had actually wanted to educate people and raise awareness about the Holocaust.
But at the time, many agreed that a platform famous for its viral dance videos was not appropriate for short clips about the Holocaust, even if they intended to raise awareness.
TikTok can be different
Two years later, also in August. It’s one of those rare hot summer days in northern Germany. But instead of spending the day at the beach, 21-year-old David Gutzeit and his younger sister, Jonna, leave the Baltic Sea coast, where they live, to drive to the Neuengamme concentration camp in Hamburg.
In the glaring sun, they contemplate a memorial of carefully piled stones, symbolic remains of the prison barracks in which thousands of concentration camp inmates were crammed together.
The Neuengamme memorial commemorates the more than 100,000 people from all over Europe who were imprisoned in the main camp and its more than 85 satellite camps during the Nazi era.
Half of these people did not survive the concentration camp.
A new approach to Holocaust remembrance on TikTok
“Many young people come here because they saw us on TikTok,” said Iris Groschek, the historian responsible for the TikTok channel at the Neuengamme memorial — the first channel of its kind when founded in November 2021.
TikTok has become an important means for the memorial center to reach young people who are no longer on Facebook and other older social media platforms, says Groschek.
“It’s not enough for me just to read about it in school books, I want to see and feel where these Nazi atrocities happened,” says David Gutzeit, a young visitor to the memorial. He looks around, visibly moved.
Nicolas from Madrid is 17 year old and says he was the one who convinced his parents to stop in Neuengamme during their sightseeing trip in Germany.
Starlett from Kansas and Hannah from Hawaii are also at the site to learn about the history of the concentration camp.
Studies show that Generation Z— people born between 1995 and 2010 — know little about concentration camps yet are much more interested in the Nazi era than their parents’ generation.
“We want to create visibility for the topic among the young target group and reach Gen-Z users on TikTok,” explains Groschek. “We would otherwise hardly be able to reach them with our educational work on other platforms.”
The account now has 27,000 followers. Some videos go viral and have millions of views.
Volunteers contribute as content creators
The video creators are young volunteers from all over the world who work at the memorial as part of their time spent working with the organization Action Reconciliation Service for Peace.
“We’re very careful that our videos don’t overwhelm users emotionally. We want the community to learn something,” says Groschek, who adds that they do not re-enact victims’ stories or concentration camp scenes, as is otherwise often seen on TikTok.
The memorial center’s pioneering work has also inspired others.
Neuengamme is no longer alone on TikTok; other concentration camp memorials, such as Bergen-Belsen in Germany and Mauthausen in Austria, followed.
Numbers clearly demonstrate the outreach potential, as Marlene Wöckinger, TikTok creator of the Mauthausen memorial, points out: Around 200,000 people visit Mauthausen every year, whereas a single TikTok video can have the same reach.
Holocaust eyewitnesses on TikTok
Some Holocaust survivors have already utlilized the platform, among them Lily Ebert, who, together with her great-grandson, has 1.9 million followers.
The 99-year-old even follows dance trends while using the platform to tell her survival story.
TikTok star, 97, shares Auschwitz experience
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Gidon Lev, who survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp, is also on TikTok.
For International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, 2023, the 88-year-old produced a video in cooperation with the Neuengamme memorial center, which is part of a video series with different Holocaust memorials that he publishes on his TikTok channel.
Why does he use TikTok for his educational work?
“To my great consternation, in these last few years, hate, violence, antisemitism and more have resurged,” says Lev.
The Holocaust survivor wants to increase awareness among young generations, warning them against “this ugly, destructive phenomena, in any and every way possible.”
“We must tell the truth, warn of the dangers and fight back! Don’t give in, don’t give up, don’t forget!”
Holocaust survivor takes to TikTok
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TikTok launches its own awareness campaign
The platform itself has recognized the popularity of the theme. TikTok now automatically links every video about the Holocaust to aboutholocaust.org, an educational website created by the World Jewish Congress and UNESCO.
TikTok has also started its own “Shoah Education and Commemoration Initiative,” which has since been awarded the Shimon Peres Prize. Accordingly, TikTok supports 15 memorial centers — such as Neuengamme or Mauthausen — by offering workshops and exchanges in cooperation with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
“We must prevent the Holocaust from being degraded to just another chapter in a textbook,” says Yaki Lopez, head of public relations at the Israeli Embassy in Berlin. “That is why it is important to adapt the commemoration of the Holocaust and the transmission of knowledge to the realities of the lives of the younger generation.”
TikTok’s Shoah Initiative also makes an important contribution in this regard, he adds.
The DW TikTok account Berlin fresh also published an educational series produced in cooperation with the Neuengamme memorial.
Guidelines for visitors to former concentration camps
A look at the DW Berlin Fresh user data shows that interest in the subject is very high: More than 9 million views were generated by one of the 30-second explainer video in the DW series, and viewers were mainly under 24.
In “3 things you shouldn’t do at a former concentration camp,” TikToker Daniel Cartwright, who is an Action Reconciliation Service for Peace volunteer from the UK at the Neuengamme memorial, explains from his personal perspective how one should behave when visiting such a site.
How does the 23-year-old feel about addressing Nazi atrocities in videos every day?
“Sometimes the horrors of the place do get to me,” says Cartwright in the DW series. “But then I hear that young people come here to the memorial because of our TikToks and want to learn more — and then I realize how important our work is.”
For more videos related to Holocaust education and German culture, visit our TikTok channel DW Berlin fresh.
This article was originally written in German.
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/holocaust-remembrance-on-tiktok/a-64519255?maca=en-rss-en-ger-1023-xml-atom